


All that is gold does not glitter

by Whit Merule (whit_merule)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BAMF Gabriel (Supernatural), Dragon Castiel, Dragon Gabriel (Supernatural), Dragons, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff, Gabriel (Supernatural) Being an Idiot, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Protective Gabriel, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 12:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14043891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whit_merule/pseuds/Whit%20Merule
Summary: prompted bythis tumblr post, which was obviously about Gabriel. it says:good shit: when a character with a reputation for being selfish and uncaring gets injured while doing something to protect othersgood shit: when they pretend they’re not injured and did nothing to protect anyone, because they want to keep up that selfish reputationgood shit: when the characters they were protecting only find out about any of this when the character collapses from the injuries they’re trying to hideGOOD SHIT: when the characters they were protecting frantically perform first aid/transport them to receive medical care, insist on staying by the character’s side until they wake up, then nurse them back to health





	All that is gold does not glitter

**Author's Note:**

> also Gabriel is a dragon because why not that's why.
> 
>  
> 
> [reblog on tumblr if you like to be helpful](http://whitmerule.tumblr.com/post/172094437370/all-that-glitters-is-not-gold)

  


  


_Oh come on, don’t pretend like you care._

_I_ don’t _care._

_Yeah, well, how about you drop us a line when you decide to think of anyone other than yourself, chuckles. Until then, stay the hell away from Cas and my brother._

  


—*—

  


Gabriel slammed the demon against the wall. Its claws scrabbled at his wrist, and he let his own claws slide out. They dug into its throat, golden and slender and hard as steel.

“You know what I am,” he said cheerfully. “So I’m guessing a bright little minion like you can guess what I’m here for. How about you tell me where they are nice and quick and I only incinerate you a little bit, huh?”

The demon squinted and choked, squirming in his hold. “You mean the Winchessterss, and the—the—“

“And my favourite cousin, yeah.”

The fire was boiling in Gabriel’s blood, surging and rolling and hardly contained. He let it show in his eyes, flaring white-hot while he grinned like a knife; and the demon whined, and gabbled out directions, and curled into a miserable ball as Gabriel leaned in very slowly and dropped a smacking kiss in the middle of its forehead.

Then he let the fire loose, and grew to his true size, and flew.

The good thing about the Pit—and there weren’t many, so it wasn’t like it was hard to keep track—was that Gabriel didn’t have to hold himself in. He raged his way downward, smashing through the platforms and runways that criss-crossed the vast space like the cobwebs they were, wreathing himself in the sparks of burning rope and wood that caught at his legs and wings and trailed out behind his tail to vanish into smoke. His head swung back and forth, belching out great ribbons of gold-blue flame that turned demons into very brief fireballs and turned the rock to glass. His claws left gouges in the walls and his tail—

The shock hit him first, even before the pain. He heard his own screech bouncing off the walls, then his body was following it: crashing now without control into this wall or that, tumbling freely, as the great ice lance that had pierced his wing tore free, ripping through sail and bone.

Gabriel screamed. And he hit the ground.

“Well, what do you know,” drawled a familiar and hated voice. “Two dragons for the price of one.”

Gabriel opened his eyes against the pain.

“Asmodeus,” he hissed.

  


—*—

  


It was a battle he wouldn’t have won, if it hadn’t been for Crowley. You could always rely on Crowley to be unreliable, and trust him to be untrustworthy. Crowley had backup plans for his backup plans, and plots for every contingency. Today it was Asmodeus’ turn to be sneakily betrayed without realising just why his cunningly laid dragon traps had gone wrong.

By the time he’d incinerated half his enemies and thrown the rest off his trail, Gabriel felt more like a skeleton leaf than one of the four most ancient dragons in the world. So he changed back to his humanoid form. No need to let them see the damage, after all. That would just be embarrassing.

He melted the hinges to the dungeon with a touch and pulled the door out of the frame. Then Dean Winchester punched him in the stomach.

“... You’re welcome.”

Dean glowered at him, standing there belligerent and soul-bright. Behind him Sam was crouched protectively over a slumped human-shaped Castiel. “The hell? What’re you doing here?”

“Always a pleasure, peach cheeks. Sammy, darling, it’s been too long, my dick doesn’t suck itself you know. Who’ve you pissed off this time, Cassie?”

“Gabriel,” said Sam, quick and relieved. “Can you get these binding cuffs off Cas? He can’t heal himself with them on and they’re draining his strength pretty fast.”

Castiel blinked open his eyes and squinted at Gabriel. Gabriel’s vision was blurring too, and sigils on the lead cuffs were wavering in and out of focus.

“You came for us,” Castiel said, simple and deep and warm and too damned surprised for Gabriel’s comfort.

Gabriel sneered. “Please. Asmodeus stole from my hoard and I came down here to get it back. I just happened to hear you lot were down here too and thought I might as well collect you on my way by. It’s a long boring flight home without company.”

Castiel gave him a look as if he’d just confessed to kicking puppies for fun. Gabriel rolled his eyes, carefully slipped his claws out from fingertips that definitely were not shaking at all, and traced the marks of unlocking on the cuffs.

They broke open and fell from Castiel’s wrists; and as Castiel rolled his shoulders and sighed his relief the dungeon heated with the flare of power released.

“Cas, you good?” said Dean, brusque and warm.

Castiel rose to his feet, blue-white fire steady behind his eyes. “I am... good.”

Dean smirked. “ _Awesome_. Let’s go. Gabriel, how’d you bust in?”

Sometimes Gabriel really wondered why he’d chosen these guys. Especially that one.

Gabriel caught Castiel’s wrist and used it to haul himself to his own feet, ignoring the strange look Sam gave him. “Doesn’t matter. Crowley’s sneaking us out the back way.”

Dean looked like he’d found half a worm in his apple. “Crowley?”

“What? He looks cute in a tiara. Besides, he owes me one.”

“Right. And you trust him?”

“Only on Tuesdays and Saturdays.”

“It’s _Friday_.”

“Then we’re living dangerously.” Gabriel patted his cheek and sashayed out into the chambers beyond. “But you know, hang around here by all means.”

Sheer stubbornness kept Gabriel on his feet all the way up and out through Crowley’s Back Passage (what, he was hilarious, and so was the face Crowley made whenever he said it). The path led out into a ravine filled with the tumbled refuse and broken orange rock from the Pit; and Crowley crossed his arms, and nodded at Gabriel.

“Fly away, pretty sparrows.”

Gabriel blew him a kiss. “Give my love to mummy dearest.”

Crowley shot him his patented everyone-is-stupider-than-me glare. Castiel strode forward a few paces, then came the _whoomph_ of displaced air and the slender silver-grey dragon was blinking sapphire eyes back at them, ducking one shoulder in invitation.

“Ugh.” Dean wiped his palms on his jeans, but stepped up to climb onto Castiel’s back. “Flying. I hate flying.”

Castiel opened his eyes wide then slipped the lower lid up to leave only a bright blue crack at the top, because he was a sarcastic little shit who couldn’t help trying to roll his eyes even when he was in dragon form.

Sam turned questioningly to Gabriel. Gabriel waved a hand at him.

“Castiel can carry you both. I’ll hang about here a bit, make sure they keep off your tail.”

Sam peered at him. “You sure? We didn’t see anyone coming out. Gabriel, are you okay? You’re looking kind of... pale.”

Gabriel’s sickly patience died an unregretted death.

“Oh, for the love of—” he snapped, then had to grit his teeth against a wave of pain. “Would you get the hell out of here, you overgrown neurosis?”

Sam huffed, gave him the We Are All Disappointed In You look, and swung himself up behind Dean. Castiel gave Gabriel a puzzled look. Then he spread his wings and leapt into the air. In another moment he was gone, leaving only the fading sound of Dean’s “Oh shiiii....”

Gabriel slumped back against the wall. Everything was going dark, little black spots expanding to fill his vision, and all the strength left in his body was draining away into the ground.

“Well?” said Crowley drily, somewhere in the distance. “Got a cunning plan for flying out of here with one wing, duck?”

“Very cunning fox plan,” Gabriel muttered, and giggled. “Oxford University.”

As he slipped to the ground, he heard Crowley’s noisy sigh. “Save me from self-sacrificing idiots.”

  


—*—

  


_I miss you, cousin._

_Hey. I’m right here, Cassie._

_You aren’t. You haven’t been for years. You only drop in when you need something and you never give anything of yourself in return._

_This from the guy shacking up with a couple of humans who treat him like their portable firestarter._

_Sam and Dean are my family, Gabriel. I wish you were too._

  


—*—

  


Even before Gabriel woke up, he knew he was back on his hoard.

The soft powerful thrum of _home_ and _strength_ was beating in his bones, knitting tissue and pumping blood. The pain had retreated into something comprehensible, and his body was his own again. And—

—and somebody was _on his hoard with him_.

Gabriel scrabbled to hands and knees with half a snarl, and Sam Winchester said “Dude” in a pained voice because Gabriel had just knocked his laptop off his thighs.

Gabriel blinked at him. The instinctive _drive the intruder out_ reaction was... was actually failing to kick in. Sam Winchester, sitting there with his stupid hair and his stupid concerned eyes surrounded by Gabriel’s _private special treasures_ , all the books and artefacts and weird random shit that he’d picked up here and there for the last couple of millennia. And Sam just looked... right.

“How’re you feeling?” Sam asked.

“... I think I’m hallucinating,” Gabriel grumbled.

Sam dimpled like an adorable idiot and picked up a deep bowl that had been perched on an eighteenth-century clockwork monkey beside him. “Nope, we’re really here. Dean says you’re an arsehat and that you should drink this.”

“The fuck does Dean know,” said Gabriel peevishly, but he took the bowl and sipped.

“Yeah, I keep telling him that. He’s only the most accomplished potion maker in the realm, and married to a dragon. Totally useless.”

“You’re indulging me. Stop it.”

“Sure,” said Sam, and grinned a shit-eating grin.

Gabriel flipped him off and drained the bowl.He could only identify a handful of the ingredients, but it was powerful. It felt like it sank straight into his bones, to stoke the fire in his heart and set his body mending. “At least he can actually make potions that don’t taste like those things that live in the slime at bottom of ponds got diarrhoea. How’d you even find my hoard?”

“Cas is sneaky.” Sam shuffled back a little way on his knees, picked up a bucket of something foul-smelling and a polishing cloth of soft leather, and jerked his head peremptorily. “Go on. Shift.”

Gabriel squirmed. “The hell I’m going to shift.”

“The hell you’re not,” Sam shot back. “Crowley was worried about you, Gabriel. _Crowley_. You’re going to show me the damage and let me fix it.”

... the boy was actually ordering him about. _Him_. And on his own hoard.

“Do you realise who you’re talking to?” he said curiously.

“Gabriel.” It was a plea and a command all at once, and Gabriel... didn’t know what to do with that. “Let me help you. Please.”

Any minute now Gabriel was going to smear this impudent human into jelly. Any minute.

But in the meantime, he found himself growling and stretching out and just... keeping on stretching. Until he filled the whole space comfortably and was curled around his treasures and... that one human in the middle of them. Who was staring in horror at the rents in his wing and the gashes and ice burns on his chest.

Gabriel sighed, and rolled onto his side to expose the wounds, and closed his eyes in defeat. “Get on with it.”

He heard Sam start to say something, then close his mouth with an audible snap. Then a hand was laid on his breastbone, a careful gentle pressure.

“Okay then,” Sam said softly; and he began to smooth the healing cream over Gabriel’s skin.

Like he belonged there.

“I thought your hoard was all... traditional,” Sam commented after a minute. “You know. Goblets and gold coins. Maybe a few precious stones.”

“Some of it is gold,” Gabriel muttered. “Do I come into your house and criticise the decor?”

“You know you do.”

Okay, that was fair.

“So you thought you’d just... cuddle up. To the wounded dragon. On his hoard.”

He felt the shrug. “Well, when Cas is sick it makes him feel better if we’re touching him.”

That was odd. There was no reason why that should be true, unless—

Ha. _Ha_. Gabriel was going to hold this over Castiel for _ever_. He wasn’t just fond of these humans and married to one. He’d actually gone and fallen for them so hard, taken them so close to his heart and the fire of him, that they counted as part of his _hoard_. No wonder curling up with them made him feel—

_oh shit_

Gabriel carefully bit that train of thought in half, threw the pieces away, tore up the train tracks and devoured them.

There was quiet for a long few minutes, while the tingling warmth began to sink in and ease the aches. Then Sam said, in that restrained tone that meant there were a lot of things he wasn’t saying, “You know. Cas could’ve carried you too. If you’d just admitted you needed it.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“Crowley brought you to us. Told us what happened. Called Dean a lot of names.”

“Just Dean?”

“Well, Dean started it.”

Gabriel snorted.

“You and Crowley,” said Sam, once the silence had drawn out for a while. “Aren’t you... enemies?”

“Oh yes.”

This time it was Sam who didn’t reply, Sam who let the silence stretch; and to his own surprise Gabriel found himself, in the end, being the one to break it.

“We understand each other. If you could ever live as long as I have you’d see the value in that.”

“Huh,” said Sam ambiguously.

“Dude,” said Dean from the hall door. “How are you not dead?”

“Too awesome,” Gabriel replied, without opening his eyes.

Dean came stomping in, and again there was that sense of... rightness. Like he belonged in this room, with Gabriel’s hoard, with the rest of...

_Nope nope nope nope._

On principle, Gabriel growled at the tiny human who was scanning the damage to his wing.

Dean thumped a fist against Gabriel’s shoulder. “Save it. Okay, Cas fetched leather and cord to patch the sails together until they heal but I don’t know if we’ll have enough. You’re a dumbarse, you know that?”

“Hey,” protested Gabriel.

Dean switched the glare from Gabriel’s wing to his face. “Seriously. Who the hell takes on the Ice Prince alone?”

Gabriel squinted at Dean down the length of his nose. “Oh come on, like you wouldn’t just rush right in to bust out Sam or Castiel.”

“Gotta give him that, Dean.”

Dean pointed at his brother. “You shut up. Stop smirking. Wait, what?”

“What?”

Dean was suddenly grinning, the little shit. “Did Gabriel just admit that he _cares_?”

“Drop it, Dean,” Sam warned.

Gabriel pushed himself up on one elbow and arched his neck, looming his head down over the impudent little mortal who was looking up at him with laughter sparkling in his eyes and not a trace of fear.

“I _will_ eat you,” Gabriel informed him.

Dean reached up and tickled his chin. “Sure you will, big guy. Man, Sam must be giving you some good dick if it’s worth—”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Then he knocked Dean over backward onto a pile of obscene tapestries from the court of the Duchess of Whippenhale, and flopped his chin down on top of him.

Dean squirmed and complained. Gabriel yawned, slowly and pointedly, squishing him without regret. It really _was_ very comfortable in here, even if this was all horribly humiliating. It felt like his hoard was all complete, all in one place, except—

_—there—_

The final piece walked in the door.

“ _Cas_ ,” Dean gasped, “make him stop, your dick of a cousin is squashing me.”

“You usually deserve it,” observed his husband without pity, and dropped a load of cured hides from his shoulder to the floor. “Gabriel. May I enter?”

“You’re the only one who’s bothered to ask,” Gabriel grumbled. “Teach your treasures better manners.”

Dean spluttered and Sam said “his what now?” and Castiel looked furtive and guilty, so apparently he’d noticed but hadn’t bothered to tell them that little detail because he and Sam were both really good at insisting on using their words and still completely and utterly failing at communication. Gabriel felt a surge of fierce affection that he couldn’t resist, so he lifted his head off the struggling human and arched his neck to rub a possessive cheek along Castiel’s body. Castiel looked astonished, then soft, then smug. And somewhere near Gabriel’s shoulder, Sam said “Oh,” in tones of wonder and reverence.

Castiel ran his knuckles along the ridge of Gabriel’s brow.

“Asmodeus didn’t steal anything from your hoard, did he,” he asked, a low chastising rumble of love. “You were only there for us.”

“You’re an idiot,” Gabriel informed him loftily. Then he curled head and tail and body around his hoard (complete at last), and spread out his damaged wing to let his treasures patch it up.

It’s always embarrassing to find that you’ve told the truth without meaning to.


End file.
